


what shallow boons suffice

by renaissance



Category: Shaderunners (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon May Joss This, Class Issues, Developing Relationship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Teenage Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 20:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14601327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: The start, and every end that isn't.





	what shallow boons suffice

**Author's Note:**

> broke my own record; read shaderunners five days ago, fell thoroughly in love with it, and now here's fic! i couldn't stop thinking about how easton said he and ezra have been burning each other down since ezra was ten, and the power of transformative fiction compelled me to write backstory. this got very out of hand so i'm sorry in advance.
> 
> i feel the need to hang a massive disclaimer over this fic, that this is all wild speculation. the ao3 canonical is "canon may joss this" but i feel like here it's more "canon will certainly joss most of this and frankly i can't wait." i've taken a bit of extra inspiration from extras on the shaderunners tumblr: [here](http://shaderunnerscomic.tumblr.com/post/163075639664/fun-facts-about-the-characters-and-any-webcomics) and [here](http://shaderunnerscomic.tumblr.com/post/160276046107/is-there-any-silly-facts-we-can-know-about-the). (this is where portia comes from!) everything else is just my headcanon. or, in some cases, i think we can call them "theories" ;)
> 
> the title is a quote from a poem, [the searched soul](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/dorothy_parker/poems/19489) by dorothy parker. i felt like it was fitting! also she's a personal icon of mine, and was prolific in the 1920s. speaking of the 20s, i've done my best to make sure all the language is era-appropriate (lots of time was spent with [green's slang dictionary](https://greensdictofslang.com/) and [google ngrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams)) but i did allow myself a bit of artistic license on account of this not being the real 20s; you'll see "up yours" in this fic, which wasn't in common parlance until the 30s, as well as a couple other words and phrases throughout.
> 
> thanks go out to carole, for indirectly getting me to read shaderunners, and to rhys, for help with an oc name. now on with the show!

There’s a house in one of the giltheel quarters of Ironwell that everyone avoids, sometimes even the people who live in it. The house sits at the end of a mews, bright walls well-kept and windows lined with planters full of pansies and petunias. By the front, there are nasturtiums and low box hedges, and unscuffed steps leading to an untarnished brass knocker. The windows are left open on warm days and the curtains are let to billow in the wind. But for its staff, the house is chronically empty.

The avoidance is no blight on the occupants; by all accounts the Lord Abelard Hareton, his husband Joaquín, and their children are the kindest folk this side of the factories, good-natured gilts who treat their staff well and give lots of strings to charity. For the first years of Lord Hareton’s marriage, he and his husband shared their time between his country manor and his husband’s native Tourmalie—an unconventional lock for a Lord descended from Paravinian nobility, but they moved to the city soon after they adopted their son and settled well into Ironwell’s iconoclastic echelons.

Why, then, do their neighbours avoid them? Why do their peers insist that they meet on neutral ground? Why does their son sneak out the back when his fathers are occupied and, undercover, make his way into town?

It’s because people treat their rich and philanthropic neighbours with a certain degree of reverence, a cycle of unattainability eternally reinforced. It’s because there’s nothing people fear so much amongst their peers as kindness, because people are always inclined to suspicion of those who treat them with nothing but amiable acceptance.

In the case of the Lord’s son, it’s because there are some things you cannot learn locked inside a gilded cage.

 

* * *

 

Ezra starts sneaking out when Portia leaves on a botany expedition to Tourmalie. Portia is sixteen and as good as independent, and Ezra is awfully jealous of her. He wishes his fathers would trust him to go out on his own, but he is sensible enough to know that this won’t happen until he’s older. So Ezra does the only sensible thing: he sneaks out.

At first, he goes to the parks. He goes to the parks and sits on the benches and watches people, ordinary people, go about their ordinary lives. Even at ten, he knows it’s wrong of him to long to be one of them, when he has been afforded all the privileges that a Galosin could ever want for. Yet there’s some allure to the anonymity of it all, and the camaraderie. Every time he visits the country manor he misses the smoky city air; he longs to be part of the masses.

He goes to public libraries. He develops a reputation for picking up stacks of books at a time and sitting with them in some darkened corner, and when the other clients complain too much that the books they’re looking for are marked as checked in but aren’t on the shelves, he moves onto a different library for a while. He reads even when he doesn’t understand the words, and he learns.

Some days, he goes into the busiest parts of Ironwell and just walks around. He wears his rattiest old clothes—not that bad by anyone else’s standards—and learns the city streets by heart. He buys fruit from streetside vendors and happily shakes his head when passers-by ask him if he’s lost. He is lost, most of the time, but that’s how he likes it.

It’s one cloudy afternoon when Ezra is really, truly lost for the first time, on a busy street by a factory which he knows means that these are people who have likely never spoken to a gilt in their lives. He’s self-conscious, weaving between people clutching the core of the apple he bought a few blocks away, which is no longer a matter of not being able to find a garbage bin and solely a matter of comfort. A burly man bumps into him and snaps to watch where he’s going, and Ezra drops his apple core. He watches it roll away and disappear under the tread of heavy factory workers’ boots, and while he’s standing there like a patsy he feels a hand slip into his pocket.

Ezra is fast. He grabs the hand and turns to see a scruffy boy standing before him, caught in the act of picking his pocket.

“You lost, gilt?” the boy says, raising his eyebrows like he’s challenging Ezra to disagree.

“No,” Ezra says, rising to the challenge. “Are you?”

He takes in the boy’s appearance; maybe Tourmish, maybe a year or two older. All gutter rat. Ezra’s fathers never tell him to avoid gutter rats, like he knows some other gilts’ fathers and mothers tell them to—they never call them gutter rats, either. Ezra was taught that the poor are only disadvantaged because of the way society has maligned them, and that they are deserving of the same respect as anyone else.

“Figure I’m not. You gonna give me any of your sparkle or do I have to fight for it?”

Ezra tightens his grip on the boy’s wrist. “You shouldn’t have to do this. Don’t you have a job?”

“Do I look like the type what has a job?”

“Picking pockets is no way to earn a living,” Ezra says. “My family can give you a job, if you come with me—”

“I don’t need your charity,” the boy snaps, shaking off Ezra’s grip. “You gilts think you’re better than the rest of us and you think that means we wanna live like you. I’ve got a job, if you’d’ve let me grab it from you.”

Actually, Ezra had spent all the change he’d brought on the apple, so there’s nothing in his pockets to pick. He feels like saying that out loud might not be the best course of action. He says instead, “It’s not charity. It’s respectable work.”

“Yeah, not keen,” the boy says. “We’ve been flappin’ our gums long enough. I’m gettin’ outta here before any Greys come by.”

He doesn’t bolt—that would probably be too suspicious. But Ezra wonders that he lingered at all. The boy moves away, and a moment later he’s disappeared into the press of people and factory smoke.

“If you change your mind,” Ezra calls after him, aware that everyone on the street is staring at him now, “we live at Hareton House, at the end of Lambourn Mews.”

A voice comes back through the crowd: “Up yours!”

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later and Ezra has all but forgotten about the pickpocket. His only memory is in his muscles; he now avoids that part of town. Not out of any less respect for its inhabitants, he tells himself. A bit of self-preservation is not a bad thing.

It’s the weekend and his fathers are lunching at a friend’s house. Ezra cuts out through the kitchen—the staff have become very good at ignoring him when he does this—and thinks about where he’ll go today. To a library, perhaps. He hasn’t read any poetry in a while.

He’s on the verge of leaving when someone catches his eye. It’s the boy from the street, scrubbing dishes at the sink. Ezra slows to a crawl and eventually his feet stop entirely of his own accord. He doesn’t need to torture himself by rehashing their last painful conversation, but something compels him to.

“You came after all.”

The boy whirls around so fast he almost breaks the dish he’s holding. “It’s no business of yours where I come and go.”

“I live here,” Ezra says, “and I like to know everyone else who’s around. What’s your name?”

“Also not your business.”

Ezra glares at him.

Eventually, the boy says, “It’s Easton Lynch. Don’t you go usin’ it.”

“I’m Ezra.” He almost holds out his hand, but Easton has a dish in one and a rag in the other.

“You’re confusin’ me for someone who gives a shit,” Easton says, and turns back to his dishes.

Ezra is not used to people swearing around him. He’s not used to people ignoring him either, but he knows better than to be a brat about it.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

He goes to the library and sits in the corner and reads poetry angrily, and he does not think about Easton Lynch.

 

* * *

 

Easton lasts seven months at Hareton House.

The final straw is not any of the times he nicks silverware from the kitchen and hawks it downtown, because Ezra catches Easton stealing no fewer than ten times and he doesn’t say anything—he knows that it’s the duty of the haves to give to the have-nots. Ezra doesn’t say anything, even when he catches Easton selling the silverware downtown. And if he catches Easton smoking in the kitchen, slacking off his shifts, disappearing for days at a time, then Ezra doesn’t say anything either. He believes in second chances. And third, and fourth, and fifth chances, apparently.

Ezra’s fathers don’t know that it was him who got Easton the job, sort of. They don’t know who Easton is. Which is why Ezra figures it’s safe to duck out of lunch early—everyone’s busy fawning over Portia, anyway, recently returned from her trip with a sketchbook full of botanical drawings. Ezra keeps his face down on his way through the kitchen and slips out into the gardens, where Easton’s sitting with his back to the house and a cigarette between his fingers. Ezra doesn’t say anything, just sits down next to him and folds his arms over his legs.

“What’s the little lord doin’ out here?” Easton asks, blowing smoke right into Ezra’s face.

Ezra coughs. “Mind your own business.”

“I guess you get bored of bein’ so posh all the time.”

“Maybe,” Ezra says. “Are you old enough to smoke?”

Shrugging, Easton says, “Don’t know how old I am. Guess I’m ‘bout thirteen.”

“So that’s a no.”

Easton holds the cigarette out. “Wanna try?”

The garden is supposed to be a haven away from Ironwell’s smoggy centre. Then again, Ezra’s seen Portia smoking out here. He figures that all air goes to the same place in the end. He takes the cigarette, cautiously, and balances it between his fingers like he’s seen Easton doing. Ezra is used to the smell from the city streets, but he can’t stop himself from coughing again.

For all his troubles, Easton laughs at him, plucking the cigarette out of his fingers..

“Yes, alright, it’s boring,” Ezra says. “I know I’m lucky, but sometimes I feel like there are things I’m just not seeing!”

“Might be things you don’t wanna see. Don’t you have any friends?”

“Don’t you?”

Easton looks at Ezra like he’s never been asked that before. Eventually, he says, “Don’t see why that’s any business of yours.”

“You keep saying that. If you were somebody else’s business—”

“We’re not gonna be friends, little lord,” Easton says. “Understood?”

“Give me that.” Ezra grabs the cigarette back, and this time he draws from it steady and keeps his cool. He couldn’t say why he wants someone like Easton to respect him, only that he does, and badly.

He waits to hear what Easton has to say to his impressive display, but he never gets the chance. Before he can hand the cigarette back, the head of the kitchen comes out to berate Easton for bunking off, and then she’s yelling at him for corrupting the Lord’s son, too. In the end, Easton loses his job for it.

It was only seven months, and Easton tells Ezra he’s much happier now that he doesn’t have to deal with gilts on the daily. Ezra blames himself anyway.

 

* * *

 

Ezra’s fathers don’t believe in grounding him or anything like that, but they’re not happy about the thing with the cigarette, so now they have a nanny follow him around wherever he goes. It only takes a week for Ezra to work out how to shake her off and sneak back into that part of town he swore he’d never visit, where he finds Easton again.

Easton has a new job doing deliveries—he says they don’t care why he lost the job, only that he used to work for gilts, and that’s prestige enough.

Eventually, they let him drive the van. By then, Ezra is twelve, and Easton could be anywhere either side of fourteen but he’s got his boss under the impression that he’s sixteen, so they’re trusting him with heavy machinery and increasingly heavier shipments. It’s one afternoon with one such shipment in the back of the van when Ezra comes along for the first time, clinging to the dashboard as Easton turns corners at breakneck speed from point A to point B.

“If my fathers knew I was here—” he begins.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Easton is smirking because he knows he’s right, and Ezra hates him for it.

“What if you scratch up the car?” he says, to distract from the truth. “It’s like you want to get yourself fired again.”

“This place is slack, they won’t give a shit,” Easton says. He flicks his cigarette out the window and onto the roads blurring past. “C’mon Hareton, burn low.”

They’re running a delivery to some inklord, a merchant who oversees the coming and going of trade ships from Autrio. Easton pulls the car up by the roadside a block away from where they’re meant to end up—Ezra only knows this because he was hiding at the bottom of the passenger seat while Easton got his orders—and wrestles one of the crates through the back window and onto the seat between him and Ezra. He pulls a crowbar out of his jacket and begins to prise it open.

Ezra panics. “Shards, what are you doing?”

“Relax, I do this every time,” Easton says. “Ain’t been fired yet.”

“It’s a lucky thing you haven’t. Apart from anything, morally—”

“Cut the crap and check this out.” Easton holds up an ingot of precious metal. It looks ponderous. Ezra doesn’t want to touch it to find out. “Reckon they won’t notice if I nab myself one of these for the road.”

Ezra picks up the top of the crate; there’s a notice stapled to the top of the box stipulating the exact weight, and how many ingots the recipient should expect. He looks back up at Easton.

“Can you read?”

Ezra knows he’s called this one right because Easton goes defensive immediately, clutching the ingot to his chest. “So what if I can’t? Don’t need to read to drive a car, and I get my jobs by word of mouth.”

“If you could read, you’d see that the quantity and weight are specified on the lid. That means they’re going to double-check to make sure all the stuff’s in here before they ship it off. You’d be found out for sure, and—”

“Fired? I don’t give a shit ‘bout that. I can get other work, else they’ll send me to the slammer and I’ll get a square meal three times a day.”

“Do you really think that’s all you’re worth?” Ezra says, before he can stop himself. He knows Easton’s looking at him funny, but he presses on. “I could teach you to read. It’s not that hard.”

“What’s there to do with readin’ except keep yourself from gettin’ caught out in a situation like this?” Easton asks. To his credit, he puts the ingot back in the crate.

“You can read novels,” Ezra says. “You can read poetry.”

“Poetry’s a load of shit,” Easton says.

Ezra smiles, challenging. “You won’t ever find that out for certain unless you read it.”

 

* * *

 

“You keep sneaking out,” Portia says, one night when it’s just the two of them in the drawing room. “Don’t pretend otherwise. I’ve seen you putting on your old clothes.”

“Don’t tell,” Ezra says.

Portia shrugs. “I did it when I was your age. A lifestyle like ours… you don’t get to make friends outside the social circle, and even then they’re all squares. Mind you, I didn’t make any friends going to libraries.”

“I also go to libraries.”

They share a smile. With six years between them, Ezra and Portia have never been close. They’re adopted and they look nothing alike; everyone says to them, “Oh, but I didn’t realise you were related!” It gets tiring. They deal with it by moving in different circles.

“Made any friends there?” Portia asks. “I know you can take care of yourself, Ezra, but you’ve got to let me worry about you. That’s what sisters are for. And there’s all sorts out there on the streets.”

“They’re just the same as any of us.”

“Have you made any friends?” she asks again.

Ezra thinks about what Easton said all those years ago, that he’d never be friends with the little lord. He worries that everything people say is right—that some types just aren’t meant to mix. Portia sure seems to think so.

“No,” Ezra says. “No friends.”

 

* * *

 

Every weekend for a year of weekends, Ezra goes across town to the library near the docks to meet Easton, although they’re still not friends. He starts by teaching Easton the alphabet—Easton boasts that he already knows the names of the letters, which is well and good until they’re reading about ducks and he confuses D with F.

They soon move on to putting words together, copying sentences out of books, writing notes to each other instead of speaking aloud. It’s the most amiable Easton’s ever been around Ezra, although he still gets snappy every now and then when he’s confused. Ezra doesn’t blame him. He’s still learning, and learning is always frustrating.

By the end of that year, Easton is reading fluently, and in his head—children’s books, but still. He’s a fast learner. Today Ezra has picked out a book full of retellings of First Landers’ myths for children. It has intricate pictures and only a bit of text on each page, and Ezra thinks Easton feels as though he’s being condescended to a bit, but for whatever reason he isn’t saying so. Maybe because he’s enjoying it.

“Not many people know this one,” Ezra says, reading over Easton’s shoulder. “Which is sad, when you think about it, because colour is so exciting. It’s hard to imagine—seeing things so differently. All these new emotions and cultural memories associated with everything we look at. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“If you say so, Professor.”

Ezra rolls his eyes. “Don’t you want to see it?”

“‘Course I do,” Easton says. “But even if colour _was_ real, it’s all in the past now, so I don’t see any point playin’ pretend.”

“Excuse me.” It’s someone else, a girl about their age, standing before their table. She’s dressed like a real gutter rat and she has eyes that won’t let you look away. Ezra hadn’t seen her approach. “Did I hear that you’re talkin’ about colour?”

“That’s right,” Ezra says. He shows her the book.

“That’s a good introduction,” she says. “If you want more depth, you should read Averiy Kelly’s—”

“Kelly’s _History of First Landers_ ,” Ezra says. “Yes, I’ve read it. The section on colour is most illuminating.”

Unprompted, the girl sits down at their table and fixes her eyes on Easton. “You said that colour’s not real. But that’s not true.”

“How d’you know? Have you seen it?” The girl says nothing, so Easton snaps the book shut. “Well?”

“No,” she says. “I have not.”

They sit in silence for what must be almost a minute as she regards them like a judge assessing a defendant. Ezra does his level best to stare back. At last, she holds out her hand. “My name’s Pamina Fortenbright.”

“Easton Lynch.”

“I’m Ezra.” They both look at him expectantly, and, panicked, he adds, “Ezra, uh, Kelly.”

Pamina lights up. “Like the author of _History of the First Landers_?”

“A distant relative,” Ezra says, scratching the back of his head. He knows Easton’s giving him a filthy look so he doesn’t look at Easton. “We’ve never met.”

“I should think not,” Pamina says, biting her lip, “given he died two centuries ago.”

Ezra laughs self-consciously. “Sorry, I’m not that funny, I know.”

“Real joker, this one,” Easton says. Ezra continues to not look at him.

Pamina slides the book they’d been reading across the table to herself, and scrutinises it. She seems to find it to her liking, because when she looks up she’s smiling. “I love public libraries. You can meet all sorts here. Did you two meet at a library, too?”

“Sure,” Easton says. “This very one.”

“I’ll have to start comin’ more often,” Pamina says.

In that moment, Ezra knows that they’ve become friends. He never imagined it might be that easy. They spend the rest of the afternoon sitting together and reading the book of myths, with Pamina chiming in to explain something in greater detail every now and then. Even Easton listens when she talks. It feels right.

Later, once Pamina’s gone, Ezra grabs Easton by the arm and asks him, “Why did you lie to her about how we met?”

“What’s another lie,” Easton says, “Hareton?”

Ezra can’t say anything to that.

 

* * *

 

Things click into place with Pamina around. Ezra doesn’t know what it is, but Easton’s not as liable to lash out with her around. Then again, Ezra supposes he’s calmer around her too. Maybe that’s just how Pamina is.

She joins them at the library every weekend and, once she’s discovered that Easton’s only just learnt to read, she starts suggesting books for him. With the combined pressure of Pamina with her novels and Ezra with his poetry, Easton is forced into getting a library card.

“Look at me,” he says, walking out of the library with a bag full of books. “I’m a real square now.”

“Guess that’s what happens when you hang around me often enough,” Ezra says, nudging him.

“You keep those safe, Easton Lynch,” Pamina scolds him. “I don’t want you drivin’ around with books on the seat and lettin’ them fly out the windows.”

“I’m not gonna. I haven’t got any work until tomorrow, anyway.”

Pamina slows her pace, contemplative. “Maybe you could both come ‘round to my place this afternoon. I can show you some things I’ve been workin’ on.”

Ezra doesn’t ask what, and neither does Easton—he reckons they both privately think it’s colour, since Pamina never stops talking about how great it used to be. Ezra thinks colour sounds pretty great, but it’s too easy for him to become pessimistic. Colour is not something he’ll ever see, not in his lifetime.

Anyway, it’s not colour. Pamina’s place is a boarding room in an old apartment block that’s coming apart at the seams, shared with five others. Ezra thinks that if he could see it in colour, it would be the least colourful place he’d ever seen. There are three bunk beds gripping the walls, and the sheets are grimy like they haven’t been washed in months.

She bends down to reach into the dust beneath the bottom bunk nearest to the window and emerges with a holdall, beckoning Ezra and Easton to come close. The way she opens the bag is bordering on reverent. It seems a bit much for a bundle of string and fabric, but then she sticks her hands in and pulls out a marionette. It’s beautifully crafted, care put into its carved wooden face and its gentle smile, its delicate dress and delicate hands.

“Do you recognise her?” Pamina asks.

To Ezra’s surprise, Easton does. “From the story about the goddess of the rains.”

Pamina nods. “Good to see you’ve been payin’ attention to your studies.”

“No thanks to the Professor,” Easton says, poking his tongue out at Ezra. Ezra doesn’t even have it in him to be offended; he’s just happy to see Easton acting like a normal person for once.

They sit together on the creaky floorboards and Pamina shows them all of her puppets, and tells the myths as she goes. It’s better than any volume of history, and more illustrative than a children’s book. Pamina’s roommates come and go and pay no mind to the three of them—if Ezra closes his eyes, he can imagine that he’s just another Ironwell teenager, a normal person from a normal family, with his normal friends.

He has come to accept this contradiction of his being, his yearning for something other when the luck of his adoption has given him all he could need. It doesn’t make it any easier, though, to open his eyes and see the reality of his circumstances.

 

* * *

 

“You two want to come on this job with me?”

Ezra is fifteen, and Easton could be anywhere either side of seventeen. Now that he’s really old enough to drive the van, he’s started taking it places other than delivery jobs, not that his bosses ever seem to find out.

Pamina is elegant and ageless, and she dangles her feet in the water over the edge of the pier at high tide. “You’ve never let me come on one of your jobs before.”

“You’re never ‘round when I ask,” Easton shoots back. “Kelly? You in?”

By now, Ezra is used to his assumed name. He thinks it suits him better than Hareton. “If Pammy’s coming.”

“I’m comin’,” she says. “You’d better, Ezra. Don’t leave me alone with Lynch.”

“Have you really never—okay, yes, I’m coming.”

“You two wait here, then,” Easton says. “I’ll get the van and pick you up.”

“Oh,” Pamina says, “mind if I tag along? Ezra’s right—it’s never just been the two of us.”

Easton gives her a curious look, but he says, “If you insist.” He must know he’s about to be in for the interrogation of a lifetime. The first time Ezra had been alone with Pamina she hadn’t stopped until she was satisfied that she had a most thorough knowledge of his every flaw. Good thing he’d taken the time to make some up in advance; by then, Ezra Kelly was a fleshed out personality, not just a name.

Now, he waits by the pier as Pamina trails off after Easton, and tries not to look too out of place. He’s better at fitting in around the city these days, but he still worries that people can tell he’s a gilt with one glance, even if his clothes are saying otherwise.

Thankfully it’s not long until Easton swings by with the van, and Pamina sitting in the passenger seat. Ezra stubs out his cigarette and gathers himself together—no point feeling weird about himself now, when he’s here with his best friend, and whoever Easton is.

The delivery today is several reams of fabric to a clothiers uptown. Ezra very prudently does not comment on the two that are lying at Pamina’s feet as he slides in beside her, sheer tulle and bold, saturated cotton. He and Pamina wait in the car while Easton drops the fabric off. It’s the kind of shop Ezra’s walked past with his fathers and Portia on many occasion. Pamina clambers across to the driver’s seat and gapes out the window; Ezra can see her dropped jaw reflected in the glass.

When Easton gets back, he pushes Pamina back to the middle, and glances down at her feet, the fabric. “Better floor it before he sees those are missin’. Buckle up, chumps.”

It’s been three years—Ezra no longer gets dizzy when he’s in the car with Easton driving like a maniac. Pamina grabs his hand as they accelerate, and he gives her a reassuring smile as she clings on for her own dear life.

“Not bad,” she says, once they’ve slowed down. “We make quite a team.”

“Hah!” Easton slaps the steering wheel. “You two did nothin’ but sit in the car. Some teamwork that is.”

“Never underestimate moral support.”

Ezra thinks, for a stupid, fleeting second, that he might be in love with the both of them.

The feeling is gone by the time they pull up at the delivery company’s headquarters and Easton is met by his boss, shouting, “What’s this? Who’re these people?”

Easton leans out the window as Ezra and Pamina jump out. “Just some acquaintances of mine to keep me company. That’s all above board, ain’t it?”

“You’re on thin ice, Lynch,” the boss says. “I’ve just got off the phone with Velura Fabrics. He says you kept a cut of the cargo for yourself. That true?”

Ezra had been so fixated on Easton’s boss, who looked like he could knock the lot of them over with one fist, that he hadn’t noticed Pamina slipping off. Now, he glances around and there’s no sight of her or the fabric. Ezra’s heart speeds up twofold.

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout,” Easton says. His voice doesn’t so much as waver.

“What about your friend here?” The boss rounds on Ezra. “Scrawny fella, ain’t you? You know anything about this missin’ fabric?”

Ezra opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He tries to shake his head but it’s like his whole body is made of marble, cold and unmoving.

Easton nudges him. “Get outta here, Kelly.” He turns to his boss. “He had nothin’ to do with it. I didn’t—”

“You get outta here too! I’m done with your antics. You’re fired, you hear me?”

Easton’s boss keeps shouting, and Easton shouts back, and Ezra keeps standing there. He can’t help feeling like the shouting is for him, like this is his fault—which it is, he tells himself, it is. Even when Easton and his boss are done, it takes Easton all but manhandling out of the parking lot for Ezra to move. He’s shaking badly and Easton shoves him against a wall, which goes some way to snapping him out of it, but not enough.

“Oh, shards,” he manages, “I’m sorry, Easton.”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Easton says. He walks off without another word.

 

* * *

 

Ezra thinks he’s being clever sneaking in the back door, but he opens it to see Portia waiting with her hands on her hips.

“Where have you been?”

“None of your business,” Ezra says. He sounds like Easton when he says it, and immediately his skin crawls. He doesn’t want to think about Easton.

“Don’t sell me that line. You’re dressed like a gutter rat and you smell worse. Your hair’s all a mess.”

Probably because Ezra had been running his hands through it all the way home. “I’ll go change.”

“Did you forget we had lunch with the Mesonis?”

“Shit,” Ezra says. “I—yeah, I forgot.”

“Language.” Portia takes her hands off her hips and puts them tentatively on his shoulders. “Is everything alright? Are you getting in with the wrong sort? Because if you’re in trouble, all you need do is tell me, and I’ll fix it for you.”

“It’s nothing. Really. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Sounds like what someone who needs to be worried about would say.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Ezra says. His fuse is growing shorter; it feels like the end of a much longer day than it’s been. “Listen, can’t I have this one thing? This one place I go where no-one’s breathing over my shoulder? Is that too much to ask?”

“Gee, it’s almost like you’re my baby brother, and I care about you! Yeah, alright, Ezra, go and have your one thing. I’m done looking out for you.”

It’s such an absurd thing to say, because Portia has never been around, especially lately when she’s been away on trips more often than not. What exactly does she think she does for him? Ezra is so furious that he storms off—which is exactly what Easton would do, and Ezra hates himself even more for that.

He stops going out, though, so he supposes Portia can count that as some perverse kind of win. And Easton—wherever he is, Ezra doesn’t want to think about it.

 

* * *

 

It’s probably suspicious that Ezra has packed a bag of his own to see his fathers off at the docks, but he is becoming increasingly aware that the wealthy are allowed their eccentricities, and no-one questions them on it. He stands beside Portia as they wave off the ship, a craft bound for an archaeological expedition. Portia hasn’t asked about Ezra’s bag, because presumably she’s sticking to her word and she’s not going to treat him like a child anymore.

Ezra is sixteen, and he doesn’t know where he’s going to go next. He doesn’t suppose there’ll be any spare beds in Pamina’s boarding house, but it’s the best option he has. Ezra hasn’t seen Pamina in as long as he hasn’t seen Easton. There’s no-one else he can go to.

“Coming home?” Portia asks, like she knows he’s not.

“Maybe later,” Ezra says.

It’s a bit of a walk to Pamina’s boarding house and it’s starting to rain. Ezra’s fluffy hair goes limp down his face and he doesn’t have it in him to care. His fathers are away. There’s no incentive for him to act like a real person. He just wants to be a ghost of the city. He stops under a shelter, still at the docks, while he waits for the rain to die down, and gets out a cigarette.

When he looks up from fumbling with his lighter, he’s staring straight at Easton Lynch. Ezra almost drops his cigarette—they lock eyes for what feels like forever before Easton puts down the crate he’s hauling and dashes to join Ezra under the awning.

“Look who it is,” he says. “The little lord cares to show his face in public once more.”

“Save it, Lynch.”

“You look like you’re goin’ somewhere.”

Ezra shrugs, blows smoke out the corner of his mouth. “Nowhere in particular.”

“Come back to mine to dry off at least,” Easton says. “I’m rentin’ a dive nearby. Pay’s decent at the docks.”

“I’m glad you found another job.”

“Save it yourself.”

They walk the short distance to Easton’s apartment, a step up from the boarding house but not by much. It’s on the top floor and has a view over the streets below. It’s noisy. Strangely, Ezra is just glad to be inside. The apartment is just one room, kitchen to one side and narrow bed to the other, a sole window over the bed and a closed door which likely has a bathroom behind. There’s a pile of books by the bathroom door. Ezra sits down on the bed for want of anything better to do. They’re both soaking wet; Easton won’t mind.

“Want some tea?” Easton says. He shakes a kettle in front of him.

“No, thank you. This is hospitality enough.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? You’ve got a pretty big bag there.”

Ezra runs a hand through his hair. “My fathers are away, and I’m a little frosty with my sister right now, so I’d rather not be at home.”

“I remember your sister,” Easton says. “Always gave me dirty looks at me whenever we so happened to be smokin’ in the garden at the same time.”

“That sounds like Portia.”

“So where were you plannin’ to stay? Not with Fortenbright, I hope.”

“Why not?” Ezra says. “I’d be more welcome than here.”

“She’s been worried sick about you. Not a peep from your end, and I can’t very well tell her what _Ezra Kelly_ is up to, can I? Pretty shit of you to cut us out like that, you know.”

“You think I cut you out?” Ezra gets to his feet and paces. It’s the only way he can process this. “I figured you—you, in particular—wouldn’t want to see me again, after I got you fired.”

“Fortenbright stole the fabric,” Easton says. “You always do this.”

“Always do what?”

“You’re always blamin’ yourself, always tryin’ to make out like you’re at fault. You got all that guilt in you because you’re embarrassed you were born rich?”

“Shut up,” Ezra says. “I wouldn’t accept culpability for something if I wasn’t… if I hadn’t done anything to…”

“When,” Easton says, shoving Ezra in the chest, “are you gonna stop lyin’ to yourself?”

Ezra is not a particularly physical person, but he shoves Easton back anyway, for all the good it does. He doesn’t remember Easton being this broad. Is it from the work he’s been doing on the docks? He barely moves an inch, but Ezra has charged forward, and suddenly they’re standing very close indeed.

“When indeed,” he says.

Easton doesn’t get a chance to respond, because Ezra kisses him. He’s never kissed anyone before—never known anyone he’d care to kiss, never really thought about it. Now it’s the only reasonable course of action. Ezra’s hands fit neatly either side of Easton’s face and he kisses like he means it, which he does. It’s only after a few moments that he notices Easton’s kissing him back, that Easton’s hands are resting either side of his hips.

“You could stay here,” Easton says, barely breaking for breath. Somewhere in the distance, the kettle whistles. “For a couple weeks. However long you need.”

“I don’t want to impose—”

“You won’t get rid of me either way.”

For a moment, Ezra believes it. And it’s raining outside—the least he can do is stay the afternoon.

 

* * *

 

“Well, it lasted three months,” he tells Pamina. “Easton is… we’re not friends. We can’t live together.”

“You are friends,” Pamina says. “But never mind that. You’re like the sun and the moon. Some people aren’t meant to work together all the time. Sometimes the moon’s in the sky but the sun’s still out, and that’s a curious kinda harmony in its own right, but it’s not common.”

Ezra wrinkles his nose. “He drinks so much tea. I missed coffee.”

They’re at a coffee house, and Ezra has been skirting about the issue, which is that he and Easton are perfectly content to be in each other’s company for however long they can go without talking—that is, until they get tired of kissing, and a couple of other things that Ezra is too prudish to think about outside of Easton’s poky apartment. The rest of the time they argued. Ezra doesn’t even remember about what. It was relentless.

“Sometimes I think you’re too patient with Lynch. Spend some time away from him and then don’t you ever spend so much time with him again.”

Ezra knows Pamina’s right. They’re all growing up, anyway. It’s about time they went their separate ways. Pamina puts on puppet shows in public parks and makes money from the tips she gets. Ezra keeps trying to give her tips, but she refuses every time. He goes along with it; it’s that or tell her that he’s been lying to her all these years, and that’s a far worse prospect. Easton has his work at the docks for petty cash, and Pamina lets him tip her, but only once a month.

At sixteen, Portia was already off on expeditions. She’s doing that more frequently, now that their fathers have started going on more of these archaeological expeditions into First Landers territory, all the rage among the upwardly mobile these days. Ezra stays home and reads books. He understands more about this world he’s barely set foot into, and the more he understands, the more he stays in.

Pamina puts a hand on his across the table. “You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t look convinced. “Yes, Pammy, really! Now why don’t you tell me about the new show you’ve been putting together?”

From this malaise, or whatever it is, the best Ezra can do is distract himself. He has to stay outside his head. He sits back and lets Pamina talk and for now, that’s all that matters.

 

* * *

 

The problem is, Ezra and Easton can’t seem to keep their hands off each other for long. It’s not just a physical thing—although it is mostly a physical thing—there’s something almost like emotional dependency in there too, and that scares Ezra. It scares Ezra enough that he discovers the best way to deal with that fear is to focus on the physical thing whenever they’re together.

It gets bad when they’re apart, too. On Ezra’s seventeenth birthday, he’s stuck at home socialising with all his giltheel peers, and he doesn’t know a single one of their names. If he ever did, they’ve flown out of his mind, because he spends the entire evening thinking how much better this would be if Easton were here, and how completely impossible it is. Perish the thought.

The party finally winds down around eleven as everyone goes home; those who’re old enough to drink go elsewhere to drink, and those who’re not, Ezra included, grow bored of being so close to the precipice of adulthood with nothing they can do about it.

Ezra’s itching for a smoke. He locks eyes with Portia on his way out and she shrugs at him as if to say, Do what you want. They’re talking, these days, but at the bare minimum.

It’s cool outside and the stars are putting on their best show in the night sky. Ezra slumps down against the back wall where he smoked his first cigarette and lights up another one. He blows a cloud of smoke in front of him and when it clears he must be seeing things, because Easton’s standing there with his arms folded around a bottle of something Ezra’s definitely not old enough to drink.

“Lynch?”

Easton squats in front of him, legs either side of Ezra’s. “Mind bummin’ me a smoke?”

“This feels familiar,” Ezra says, handing him the cigarette. “What’re you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday.”

“Did Pammy tell you that?”

“Yeah,” Easton admits, “but I came anyway. Don’t know my own, so I’ve gotta celebrate someone’s. Got you some shine.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Ezra says. He allows himself an indulgent smile for all of half a second before fixing Easton with a proper glower. “I mean it. I can’t drink at home. Apart from anything else, Portia will lose it at me.”

“Shards to Portia, let’s go someplace else then. Back to mine?”

Ezra sighs. “Much as I’d love to, I can’t disappear on my birthday.”

“You’re dull as ditchwater.”

Easton puts the bottle down, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and holds it to one side so he can kiss Ezra. This is the part where everything else becomes insignificant. It feels dangerous to be doing it right in his own home. Now that this line has been crossed, Ezra’s almost of a mind to say shards to them all and smuggle Easton in up to his bedroom. Surely nobody will recognise the boy who worked in the kitchen for seven months, six years ago? He’s changed so much since then.

Pulling back, Easton leers down at Ezra. “Sure you don’t wanna get outta here?” he says, running a finger along Ezra’s jawline. “Haven’t seen you since—”

Portia’s voice cuts through the quiet of the night: “Ezra! What the—get away from my brother, you—you gutter rat!”

Easton scrambles to his feet and staggers backwards, kicking the bottle of shine over. He looks like a drunkard. Even Ezra is scared of him, for a second.

Ezra finds his voice at last. “Don’t say that, Portia.”

“Why shouldn’t I tell it like it is?” She sounds halfway to lit. Ezra hadn’t noticed until now. “He’s a gutter rat, isn’t he? Is this your fella, the one you stayed with when you—or is he a stranger? Tell me or I’ll call the Greys!”

“Tell her I’m your friend,” Easton says. “Come on, Kelly!”

“Kelly?” Portia says, her voice rising an octave. “Who the shit is Kelly?”

“Oh, shit,” Ezra says. His voice breaks. Easton’s never called Ezra his friend before. He tries to stand up, but he’s tripping over his own feet. His cigarette is burning a hole in the grass. “Portia, I can explain—”

But before he gets a chance, the lights go on in the kitchen and other people start coming out into the garden, drawn by the commotion. Easton bolts, and suddenly nothing seems so important as catching up to him. Ezra grabs the bottle of shine from the grass and runs.

“Easton, wait!”

 

* * *

 

Ezra moves back into Easton’s apartment with nothing but the clothes that were on his back when he ran out of the house on his birthday and whatever he left there last time. He doesn’t have access to his savings—he can’t waltz into the bank, knowing his family will find out if he does—so he takes a job at the public library where he and Easton met Pamina. He takes the job under the name Ezra Kelly, and they don’t ask questions. The worst part is that Easton still makes more string at the docks, pays for most of their meals. Ezra drinks a lot of tea. He feels like a kept gentleman.

Ezra wants to think his fathers would understand, but he catches word on the street that the Haretons aren’t talking about their son. He guesses the charity they taught him doesn’t extend quite so far after all. He reads about their expeditions in the papers and then throws the papers away before Easton gets a chance to read. Easton never asks.

They still argue. It wouldn’t be Ezra and Easton if they weren’t arguing. If anything, they argue more. They also sleep together more—it’s hard not to when there’s one tiny bed between them. They stay up late and get lit and screw, and then the next morning Ezra makes the bed and they pretend it didn’t happen. Pamina comes over and Ezra makes certain that she never catches on.

Easton asks him, once, if he’s ashamed.

“Of what?” Ezra says, stalling.

“Forget it,” Easton says. “We’re not sweethearts.”

It’s not a lie. They don’t take each other to the opera or any other such things. “You can tell Pammy we are, if you want,” Ezra says. He knows that’s what Easton’s getting at.

Easton pulls a face. “That’s not the point. It’s because you don’t think I’m good enough for you, is that it? Because you’re a gilt and I’m a gutter rat.”

“Does any of that matter?”

“Guess not,” Easton says, “given we’re not even friends.”

“So what do you call this?” Ezra demands.

Ezra wouldn’t be able to say himself. He’s not even sure there is a word for what he and Easton are. They’ve known each other coming up eight years, now, but they’ve never been friends. They live together, but they don’t like each other. They’ve done just all it’s about possible for two people to do together and yet some days Ezra doesn’t think he knows a damn thing about Easton.

“We’re flames,” Easton says. “That’s all.”

They’re flames, and this is what they do: they burn each other down. When it gets bad, Ezra goes out for walks by the docks. He sits on the pier and smokes like a chimney while he watches the people go past. Ezra turns eighteen sitting on the pier and smoking.

Be careful what you wish for, he thinks. Ezra is, at last, one of the masses. The guilt hasn’t gone away. He’s beginning to think it never will.

 

* * *

 

There’s a knock on the door. Ezra is still in bed, half-asleep and half-naked, with a half-burnt cigarette resting between his lips. Easton’s at the stove watching over the kettle, so Ezra says, “You get it.”

“Lazy,” Easton says, but he goes anyway.

Ezra rolls over so he’s facing the window. He doesn’t care who it is. He’s lazy about everything; doesn’t even read the paper anymore. So it’s like a freezing cold shower when he hears Portia’s voice. All she says is, “ _You_ ,” but Ezra knows it’s her right away. He stays on his side.

“Who’re you lookin’ for, the Empress Rose?” Easton says. “Of course it’s me. Who’re you?”

“Portia,” Ezra says. He sits up, looks at her at last, and his heart stops. There’s a mourning veil covering her face, and she’s dressed in the darkest clothes. “Portia, what happened?”

“You bastard, I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” She pushes past Easton and into the apartment, flinging the door shut behind her. “In the end I met someone at the docks who seemed to know you, and gave me this address. What have you been doing with yourself this past year?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says hastily, taking Portia by the arms. “What happened?”

Portia looks more angry than sad. “Dad died,” she says. “Joaquín, not… well, there was an avalanche on one of their expeditions. Six people died as well as him, and you weren’t even there for the funeral.”

Ezra’s shoulders sag and his head falls forward onto her shoulder; Portia collects him up in a hug and holds him tight as he starts to sob. Ezra hasn’t cried like this since he was a kid, and it shows. It’s all coming out now, tears and snot and a flood of incorrigible emotion.

Behind Portia, Easton clears his throat. “Sorry about your—um—should I—”

“You’re his fella,” Portia says. “Go make him a damn cup of tea.”

“I’m not—” Easton says, at the same time as Ezra says, “He’s not—”

Neither of them finish their sentences. It seems stupid to argue about semantics at a time like this.

At length, Ezra’s all sobbed out, and the three of them move to sit on the bed. Ezra’s sick of tea, but he takes the cup when it’s offered. It’s warm, and that’s all he cares about. Easton throws a cowl and his arm around Ezra’s shoulders, gripping tight. Well, maybe Easton is his fella, Ezra thinks, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing right now.

“We need you back home,” Portia says. “Abelard is moving back to the country. I’m going to go with him. There’s nothing for me in this awful city. Someone’s got to stay in town to keep Hareton House running.”

“I can’t,” Ezra says. “This is—this is my life now. I’m no gilt.”

“No, it’s not,” Easton says. Ezra turns sharply to glare at him, but Easton is unperturbed. “You’re a fancy man, Ezra. Go back to your fancy house. I’ll be fine here.”

“Don’t say that.”

“He’s right, though, isn’t he?” Portia says. “Look at you, you’re skin and bone. Don’t pretend you haven’t missed creature comforts. No offence, er…”

“Easton.”

“Easton,” Portia echoes, amused. “You’re the kid who got fired from the kitchens for giving my little brother a smoke, aren’t you? How many years has it been?”

“Too many,” Easton says. “Ezra, you think about it, but don’t let me stop you.” He turns back to Portia. “We’re not some sweet thing. You don’t have to worry about tearin’ us apart.”

Ezra dips his head, because he doesn’t want either of them to see his face. No, of course not, what was he thinking? There’s no way Easton Lynch would ever be his fella. Not in a hundred years. And for all his ideals that he’s one of the masses, there’s no way he’ll ever blend in, not properly. It’s time to go back inside the cage.

“Don’t bother waiting,” he says, shaking Easton’s arm off and getting to his feet. “Portia, let’s go.”

On the way out, Ezra leaves his half-finished cup of tea on the kitchen counter. Let it go cold.

 

* * *

 

For some weeks after he returns to Hareton House, Ezra keeps meeting up with Pamina and, reluctantly, Easton. They go to the library—where else?—and sit at the back with Kelly’s _History of Orolin_ , because _History of the First Landers_ has been checked out for months now. Ezra only knows because Pamina keeps complaining about it. She can’t find anything with as much detail on colour.

Easton doesn’t need help with words anymore and Ezra can no longer bring himself to read over Easton’s shoulder. Pamina has no such propriety, tracing words with her index finger and occasionally with a fine pencil, for the next patron to click their tongue over.

Ezra knows it’s antisocial, but he keeps checking his pocket watch. Now that the errant son has resurfaced, the giltheels of Ironwell have been lining up to meet with him and offer their condolences. It’s exhausting—Ezra hasn’t had any time to grieve for himself. He doesn’t suppose he deserves it, yet that doesn’t stop him from wanting it. The worst part, though, is that his peers don’t talk about his year-long absence from the social scene. It’s like it never happened. This, Ezra thinks, is exceptionally unfair.  For as long as he lives, he’ll never be able to forget that it happened.

At last it starts to get to him, and he pushes his chair back from the table. There’s only so long he can spend in between his two selves.

“Leaving so soon?” Pamina says, before he has a chance to say anything.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra says, “I really am. I have an appointment to make.”

“That’s right,” Easton says. “Lord Hareton.”

Ezra goes still. For all this time he’s spend keeping it a secret, it takes Easton two words to throw it wide open.

But then Pamina says, “Oh, who’s that?”

“Nobody interesting,” Ezra says, although he’s sure the blush on his face says otherwise.

“Now, don’t sell yourself short,” Easton says. “Our boy Kelly’s got a fancy man uptown, isn’t that right?”

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Ezra says diplomatically. Pamina looks amused, like she knows something that neither of them do—which makes it funny, Ezra thinks, how little she really knows.

Ezra Kelly leaves the library, and Lord Hareton closes the door behind him. He turns his back on Easton and Pamina for what he tells himself will be the last time.

 

* * *

 

Someone walks past the nasturtiums and the box hedges and raps on the brass knocker on the front door of Hareton House. The footman, in turn, knocks on the door of Lord Hareton’s office, cautious to distract him from his reading.

“A visitor for you, sir.”

Ezra is nineteen and he’s still not used to being called “sir.” He puts a bookmark in between his pages and smiles at the footman in what he hopes is an encouraging manner. “Did they give a name?”

“No name, sir,” the footman says. “He said a Miss Fortenbright sent him.”

Before the footman is finished his sentence, Ezra is on his feet and out the door. He throws a coat over his shirtsleeves and sprints until he’s just out of sight at the door, at which point he pauses, catches his breath, and walks the final hallway with his shoulders squared for whoever may greet him.

It’s Easton. Of course it’s Easton.

“Pammy sent you, did she?” Ezra says.

“Figured you didn’t want her to see how you live,” Easton says. “No offence meant, Lord Hareton.”

“Absolutely none taken.” It’s been over a year. Ezra doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Well, what’s her message for me?”

“More like we’re canvassin’ for expressions of interest. You might’ve read there’s been some buzz about colour in the papers. You seen any yet?”

Ezra had read. He’d thought of Pamina every time he read it, too. “No, I haven’t seen it.”

“Huh. I figured they’d at least show all the gilts. Guess you’re never really gonna be one of them, are you?”

Ezra does not let himself anger over this. It would be too easy to fall back into those old patterns with Easton; Ezra gets the sense there’s more at stake here than is worth arguing over. “Have you seen it?”

“Might have done.” Easton puts a hand to a locket around his neck. “You want to?”

“I want everyone to see it,” Ezra says. He’s surprised by how breathless he sounds.

“Follow me, then.”

This is one impulse Ezra has never been able to avoid. He grabs a hat from the rack by the door and dashes over the threshold, letting the door swing shut it behind him. Easton is walking ahead at a clipper pace—he’s grown taller since they last saw one another—and Ezra has to really stride to catch up. He’s never felt the fresh air around him so acutely, a gentle uptown breeze blowing him into the smoky city he hasn’t stopped loving. Easton looks over his shoulder and smiles, that same smile he’s always had that promises trouble.

Not the giltheel lord nor the quiet man sitting at the back of the library, armed with neither innocence nor experience, Ezra welcomes this new danger. The house at the end of the mews is empty again.


End file.
